Larry Abramson
Larry Abramson is NPR's National Security Correspondent. He covers the Pentagon, as well as issues relating to the thousands of vets returning home from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Prior to his current role, Abramson was NPR's Education Correspondent covering a wide variety of issues related to education, from federal policy to testing to instructional techniques in the classroom. His reporting focused on the impact of for-profit colleges and universities, and on the role of technology in the classroom. He made a number of trips to New Orleans to chart the progress of school reform there since Hurricane Katrina. Abramson also covers a variety of news stories beyond the education beat.
In 2006, Abramson returned to the education beat after spending nine years covering national security and technology issues for NPR. Since 9/11, Abramson has covered telecommunications regulation, computer privacy, legal issues in cyberspace, and legal issues related to the war on terrorism.
During the late 1990s, Abramson was involved in several special projects related to education. He followed the efforts of a school in Fairfax County, Virginia, to include severely disabled students in regular classroom settings. He joined the National Desk reporting staff in 1997.
For seven years prior to his position as a reporter on the National Desk, Abramson was senior editor for NPR's National Desk. His department was responsible for approximately 25 staff reporters across the United States, five editors in Washington, and news bureaus in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The National Desk also coordinated domestic news coverage with news departments at many of NPR's member stations. The desk doubled in size during Abramson's tenure. He oversaw the development of specialized beats in general business, high-technology, workplace issues, small business, education, and criminal justice.
Abramson joined NPR in 1985 as a production assistant with Morning Edition. He moved to the National Desk, where he served for two years as Western editor. From there, he became the deputy science editor with NPR's Science Unit, where he helped win a duPont-Columbia Award as editor of a special series on Black Americans and AIDS.
Prior to his work at NPR, Abramson was a freelance reporter in San Francisco and worked with Voice of America in California and in Washington, D.C.
He has a master's degree in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. Abramson also studied overseas at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and at the Free University in Berlin, Germany.
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Occupy Wall Street protesters say the high cost of college is one of the barriers between them and a good life. College costs have skyrocketed, though maybe not as much as you might think. -
The White House is inviting states to apply for waivers from the No Child Left Behind law. The proposal would cut some slack to 85 percent of the nation's better schools. But advocates for minority and special education students fear their students will fall off the map. -
The Department of Education says that as distance learning has grown so has fraud. An inspector general's report found that scam artists are taking advantage of the popularity of online education to steal federal education money.
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The White House is announcing Friday that it will grant waivers to states that cannot meet the testing standards of the No Child Left Behind education law. But states will face strict scrutiny from Washington before they get these waivers.
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The nation's for-profit colleges and universities received more than $1 billion in benefits from the Post-Sept. 11 GI Bill in the last year alone. But some say the for-profit schools aren't policed well enough — which creates an opening for abuses — and their dropout rates are too high.
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Maryland students face a new graduation requirement: they must be schooled in environmental protection before they finish high school. The path-breaking proposal creates new challenges for teachers, who must seek out a balanced approach to a sensitive subject. -
The cable giant now offers Internet access to low-income families for $9.95 per month. Stipulated by its merger with NBCUniversal, the effort is meant to help children access resources they need for school. But families need more than cheap Internet access to bridge the digital divide, experts say. -
The school system is looking for an answer to its low achievement, huge debt and declining enrollment with new leadership and ideas. But teachers say they've been left out of the equation. -
Irene's sweep up the East Coast caused millions to lose power this past weekend — many of whom may not have it restored for days. And although most mass transit systems are up and running again, long-distance travelers aren't so lucky: They're stranded at airports and rail stations across the region. -
Hurricane Irene did not turn to be the storm of the century. It did, however, cause millions to lose power, forced hundreds of thousands to be evacuated and resulted in a number of fatalities. Still, many in beach towns remarked at how lucky they were.
